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We just welcomed Chris Metcalfe, Matt Lau, and David Mencin who will be helping us tomorrow morning. We'll be getting out the weather probes and some of the other GPS-related equipment that will be going with us to the very top of the mountain. So we're pretty excited about that—getting everything obviously tested so that we don't carry up a bunch of tent dead men in the way of equipment that doesn't work. So we're all pretty excited about learning about all that stuff and actually getting on with the business of climbing the peak.

The Icefall is in kind of critical shape right now. It almost feels like it's a month ahead of schedule, chiefly because it's been so warm. There have been some beautiful arches forming, actually right in the center of the Icefall, that we thought would last for quite awhile, and fortunately Jeff was able to get some good photographs of it on videotape and will be part of the NBC program that will come in early 2000. But unfortunately they're obviously very ephemeral and don't last very long. And by the time we were on our way back down, the arches had completely collapsed—another one of those transient moments in life obviously and in the Khumbu Icefall, it makes things very dramatically clear sometimes.

But I'm thinking very much more upon our climb of Nuptse really. We can see the ridge right here from Base Camp quite well. We see the profile of it. And it's a beautiful mixed ridge. It looks like about 1500' of ice climbing and about 500-600' of mixed climbing and then some very beautiful ridge climbing as well. And it was a very unique moment for me to go over beneath that ridge with Bill Crouse.

We were just looking at the southwest face of Everest, which just loomed incredibly huge over our heads and it was just an amazing moment. You know this is the—obviously some of you already know this—but it's the 13th time I've been here. It leaves me, to go back to that double couplet from T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration
and the object of all our exploring
is to arrive at the beginning
and know the place for the first time

And for me that was certainly the feeling I had there, being in the Western Cwm, obviously I've been there hundreds of times, but taking on a completely new perspective, I felt that I truly knew it. Well that's probably not much for tonight's conversation with you all, but I hope you're all well. And thank you for spending time with us. And we'll be going to the top with you all real soon. This is Pete. Goodnight for now.

—Pete Athans, Expedition Leader

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